Hello, I'm Jin (he/him). I started this blog to document and archive most of the stuff I've baked. I'm self taught and do not have any professional experience/training in baking. I started baking around December 2025 and continued since then as a hobby and stress relief. This blog will serve to keep track of what I'm making.
Some things to note:
UPDATE: As of 7/16/26, this blog will now include cooking posts.
This is NOT an aesthetic blog; it is supposed to be a journal/archive. Whether it was a success or failure, it will be posted here. Not everything will look pretty.
Most photos will not be edited beyond cropping or blurring/blocking out.
I'm a beginner baker, so please do not expect perfection. I'm always willing to learn new things though!
Since I've baked a large number of things before making this blog, I might not be able to retroactively post what I've made before then.
I do not have any plans on pursuing baking as a career nor business. This is all just for fun and stress relief.
All photos posted here are my own unless stated otherwise.
Just a little update since I haven't posted recently.
I still haven't gotten a replacement oven yet and I'm too frustrated to continue trying to work with that tiny toaster oven. Things burn too quickly and most of my pans won't fit in the baking area, so I'm just...not going to bake until I get a new oven. This is all just making me lose my motivation and I don't want to burn out.
In the meantime, I might post about stuff I've cooked if they're interesting enough. I suppose this is now a general blog about food I made, which I don't mind that much. At least this will give me more variety to post about.
Also, I will not change my blog name. I'm fine with keeping it as is even if it's not entirely accurate to my blog's content.
I made the cookie dough about a week ago, but my oven broke so I unintentionally aged the dough for a week. Surprisingly, they actually turned out pretty good and had a deep flavor. Very chewy with a soft, gooey center. The melty chocolate chips made it feel even more indulgent.
This one is probably one of my new favorite cookie recipes. Brown butter recipes are just so much easier and less fussy than creaming butter and sugar. The only problem with this is that I don't always have bread flour.
I'm currently using a tiny toaster oven in the interim, so I'm limited on what I can bake until I can get a new oven. Cookies and muffins are fine, but I can only bake small amounts at a time. I guess it's better than nothing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Recently, I tried to make the infamous Jacques Torres chocolate chip cookies (yup, the one with the 72 hour dough chilling). I don't always have bread and cake flour at the same time, but I happened to have them both. I also really needed to use up the bag of bread flour since it was expiring soon so it was the perfect time to try it.
For this recipe, I baked off 2-4 pieces of dough for each 24 hour interval of chilling (24/48/72/96).
I did a half batch since I didn't have the fridge space for a full one. For ease of access since the recipe is hidden behind a paywall, here's the half-batch recipe I did:
120g Cake Flour
120g Bread Flour
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
3/4 tsp Baking Powder
3/4 tsp Salt
142g Unsalted Butter
142g Light Brown Sugar
113g Granulated Sugar
1 Large Egg
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
Chocolate Chips
Baked at 350F for about 15 minutes.
I got 14 pieces of cookie dough balls out of this using a medium cookie scoop. Even though the recipe said to chill the dough for up to 72 hours, I did leave a few pieces of dough to do a 96 hour chill comparison.
24 Hours:
For the 24 hour chill, I decided to bake off just 2 pieces since I wanted to save more for the longer chill bakes. The taste wasn't bad, but it also wasn't anything too special. The flavor wasn't full developed yet, so it was a bit bland. I also forgot about the trick of banging the pan on the counter, so the cookies were more dome-shaped.
48 Hours:
The extra 24 hours of chilling made a huge difference in taste. The flavor was way more developed and rich. I also adjusted the baking time since they were too underbaked the day before. After the 15 minute mark, I turned down the heat to 325F and baked an additional 2 minutes. That helped the cookies flatten a bit more, though I still had to bang the pan against the counter to give them a nicer shape. They had a more chewy center compared to yesterday's bake thanks to the baking adjustment.
72 Hours:
The flavor was definitely the best at the longer chill times. It had a deeper buttery/caramelized taste (sorry for the lack of better description) and the texture was perfectly soft and chewy in the middle while slightly crispy on the outside. I did the same baking adjustment as the previous day's bake along with banging the pan. These cookies were definitely worth waiting for 72 hours.
96 Hours:
This batch was more of a curious experiment to see if waiting even longer would make them better. The taste and texture weren't really much different from the 72 hour chilled cookies. The edges were maybe slightly less crispy, but it wasn't a huge difference. I'd say it's fine to chill them for over 72 hours if you really don't want to bake them all on day 3.
Overall, I'd say these cookies are definitely worth the fridge space and long chill times if you have the ingredients. I'm not the best at describing the taste and texture, but I truly like these cookies the most after chilling the dough for 72+ hours. Maybe next time I'll try chilling the dough even longer just to see how well/long the dough keeps. Or probably using just all-purpose flour since I don't usually have bread flour.
I made some savory scones for brunch a few days ago and wanted to make a post here. This was a nice, refreshing break from all of the sweets I baked up recently and allowed me use up the last bit of heavy cream. This was also the first time I baked something savory instead of sweet, so I was glad I got to do something new.
Recipe I used: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/ham-cheese-scones/#tasty-recipes-111389
For this session, I mostly did minor modifications. I added a bit more seasoning than what the recipe called for, replaced the ham with a shredded salmon burger patty and added some green onions. Then I sprinkled some everything bagel seasoning on top of the scones after the egg wash.
They were really delicious and fluffy! It was my first time making scones so I was pleasantly surprised at how well they came out. I'll definitely be making these again sometime.
Also, here's a bonus picture of the green onions I chopped up. I just liked the way the colors formed a nice gradient.
Recently, I've made a lot of Japanese roll cakes. It seemed intimidating at first, but they were really fun to make. I also had to use up a large carton of heavy cream so roll cakes were a good candidate to do this with.
I made them in 5 different flavors but I definitely did a repeat of a couple of them. These were all done over the course of a week.
From left to right: vanilla, ube, coffee, Oreo, peach
I ended up making the coffee and Oreo ones twice because my family really enjoyed them. My favorite was definitely the Oreo, but the ube one was a close second.
I don't remember where I got the recipe from, but I did write down the half recipe ingredients for it since my oven and pan are small.
Please note that this is not my recipe and I'm mostly writing these here for future reference.
Base recipe:
Batter:
2 Egg Yolks
15g Sugar
1/4 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
20g Oil
20g Milk
45g Cake Flour
Meringue:
2 Egg Whites
50g Sugar
Gently fold meringue into cake batter. Bake at 340F/170C for 25 minutes.
Cream:
120 mL Heavy/whipping Cream
30g Powdered Sugar
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
Below are the variations that I came up with:
Ube variation:
Add 1/2 tsp ube paste to batter and cream
Coffee variation:
Dissolve 1 Tbsp espresso powder in 2 tsp hot water, mix in batter and cream.
Oreo cake:
Add 7g cocoa powder and 7g black powder to cake batter.
Reduce cake flour to 40g.
Oreo cream:
100g Mascarpone/Cream Fraiche/Cream Cheese
6 Oreos (cream and cookie separated)
40g Condensed Milk
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
25g Powdered Sugar
120 mL Heavy Cream
Peach cake:
Add 20g peach puree to cake batter
Peach cream:
100g Peach Puree
1/2 tsp Vanilla Paste
40g Condensed Milk
20g Powdered Sugar
120 mL Heavy Cream
I had a lot of fun coming with up with the ways of making different flavors and would like to try making new flavors the next time I get my hands on some heavy cream again. It will be a while until then, but I look forward to making more roll cakes someday.
Before I started this blog, I baked several things since December 2025. Unfortunately, I wasn't diligent with taking photos of everything I made nor did I keep track of every recipe/modification I used. I'll still post whatever photos of things I took so far.
December 2025:
January 2026:
February 2026:
March 2026:
April 2026:
May 2026 (first half of the month):
May 2026 (second half):
I wanted to make this post sooner, but transferring photos from my phone to computer was difficult and annoying. This is NOT an exhaustive list as there were definitely more things I baked that I never took pictures of. From this point onward, I'll try to be more consistent with documenting what I did.
From this quick overview, I see some improvement as each month passed. It's been really fun doing many new recipes and learning a variety of things. There's still plenty of other stuff I plan on baking that I look forward to.
